Google Image Search

In order to give the Marine and Natural History Photography student I am to be working with an insight into the kind of photograph I am after, I am making up a Pinterest board of images. This seems useful for my own process as well as it has quickly become apparent that I have a very set idea of what I want (compositionally, colour-wise, level of detail etc.). Really, I am looking to make similar images to the once I have already, but with a far greater level of detail (and taken more expertly).

I have been Google Image Search-ing using some of the photographs I have and find the results a little amusing... the suggestions of similar images almost exclusively brings up pictures of planets (if on the black background) and jewelry or jewels (if with the white background), both things I have explored as connotative concepts to the contact lenses.

Another intriguing result was this one below !! ...I wouldn't have said that the original image looks particularly like an eye but I love that it brings them up. The arbitrary nature of Google Image Search can be quite uncanny when it aligns like this - it highlights a kind of gap between what we register subconsciously and what we openly acknowledge in viewing images.

The Pinterest board can be found here: Contact Lens Images (Ideas)

Scratched Glasses Lenses

I was playing around with focusing light through my glasses and realised how scratched and dirty they are. The marks remind me of the images of the contacts through the microscope. I find these such beautiful and interesting images because they're really mysterious - I'm certain I could never guess what they were if I didn't know. The way the light is warped to make different colours is mesmerising. I feel this would make a cool video piece if I were to record it properly, although I'm not really sure what it would say. I suppose it is turning something bad - imperfections - into something beautiful and therefore changing its value. Although I think maybe, along with their visual similarities, perhaps these images are also like the microscope ones in that they don't allow much for the imagination to go off because they are so obscure. They don't have any strong associations that I can think would be particularly poetic or significant.

Death Cafe Exhibition Ideas

My immediate thought about what to exhibit in Lost For Words is my Dust From A Doctor's Waiting Room piece, which I presented as part of the Schism show last year. I feel this is my most 'deathy' work to date, and the one with most potential to mean something in this particular context. At the moment it is just in a petri dish, which I might keep but I can't think at all how it would work in such a big space... it would need to be on a plinth or a shelf or something to make it more substantial and more of a work. I'm going to aks for people's opinions and do some thinking over the next few weeks. 

Presentation Experiments

I meant to make this work for the last assessment but the delivery of the jewelry box was extremely late. I think I'm a bit glad that it was as it now seems to me a really 'cheap' work - the associations with the contacts being precious are too blatant. I'm after something more subtle. I thought I may as well play around with the box anyway....

I've been reading up on museum display and the curation of galleries, along with Marcel Broodthaer's approach to presenting his work as a gesamtkunstwerk - how my work is displayed is particular important as I am dealing with everyday and disposable objects; its all about how their value will be perceived. 

Contact Lenses Through Microscope

I posted on the Marine and Natural History Photography facebook page asking for help in taking photos of my lenses through a microscope and managed to get hold of someone who would help. As I had no idea what I was doing or what kind of images I would find I feel I came away from the experience with images that are a bit lacking. I found it really frustrating because what I saw through the microscope was absolutely fascinating - I loved the colours and the image was really clear, but it just didn't translate to the camera. The final image below is one I have edited to look more like what I saw without the camera.

In my tutorial we discussed how these images don't leave a lot for the viewer to go on in order to get anything from them... they don't look like anything, just abstract shapes, which (for me anyway) doesn't spark the imagination. I was so proud of myself getting hold of someone and using their skills - its such a shame that it didn't work out first time, but I hope to try the microscope again in future as I'm sure I can make some really good images with it. 

(Geological) Time

I laid out all my contacts like this and realised that they looked like pieces of rock or jewels, which had me thinking about geological specimens and how rocks can describe periods of time. I think in mind I had Katie Paterson's 'Fossil Necklace', made of beaded fossils spanning geological time. I LOVE this - I think I mentioned it in my essay I wrote about Paterson's work last year, and how it condenses the immense and immeasurable. The necklace is almost a metaphor.

The little numbers underneath the pairs of lenses relate to a key which I made, describing the dates when the contacts were in use e.g. May 2013 - November 2013. In my mind thre would be no real explanation of what the work is and it would be open to the viewer to decide what the objects and the dates mean together.

The Light In My Eye

I had this sheet of acetate saying 'the light in my eye' left over from when i displayed it on the projector last assessment, and I've stuck it to the skylight directly above my desk. I often sit and look up at it, watching the sky grow dark in the evening and thinking about the light fading from my eye. When it grows dark, the words cannot be made out against the night sky. I find this really poetic; there is something so simple about it, but so fitting. I wonder how I would make this a work that could actually be acknowledged. I quite like it being so spontaneous and makeshift. It is also so subtle that you would probably miss it unless you were in the right position because when you are standing up it merges with the houses in the background. (This reminds me of when I'm not wearing glasses or contacts and everything that is the same colour merges into each other. I can only make out contrast.)